The Kobayashi Maru Page 10

  "What?" Chekov wasn't the only one to ask the question aloud; he assumed that was why no one turned to scowl at him for speaking.

  "What the hell did you want?" Baasch demanded. "We didn't all do the same thing!"

  "Some of us," another cadet injected, "didn't even kill anybody!"

  Kramer stood, unmoving, at the front of the shuttle, not even raising his hands to signal for silence. "Nor did any of you," he told them sternly, "react appropriately to the situation presented." No one interrupted him. "Cadet Nabuda," he summoned. "Explain the objective of the Aslan scenario."

  Nabuda frowned, glancing to her left and right as though hoping to gain some insight from her classmates. "We were to stay alive," she said finally. "To avoid being killed."

  "I see." Kramer looked from one bewildered face to the next, his gaze resting on Chekov's only long enough for the ensign to understand that he'd been noted. "I needn't ask to know that is what you all believe. I observed enough ambushing and booby-trapping this weekend to know how you were thinking."

  "Chekov was the only one setting traps."

  Chekov twisted in his seat to face the speaker, alarmed and injured by the bitterness in her words. Sasha kept her eyes pointedly locked on Kramer, not even acknowledging Chekov's attention with a scowl. He felt his heart melt within him.

  "He was merely the most creative killer among you. None of you really understood the difference between self-defense and command." Kramer crossed his arms and leaned back against the bulkhead. "Many years ago, this same exercise was performed with a class of cadets on an abandoned lunar base. They were told the same things as you—that they were being hunted, that they must survive. Unlike you, however, they had among them a very creative officer who commanded in the situation, instead of merely preserving himself.

  "The officer in question inferred—correctly—that it made no difference if one or one hundred cadets survived the scenario. What mattered was avoiding the assassin. He secured one of the dining halls and began drafting a security force to guard the entrances. Anyone who wished to enter had to surrender their weapons; they were then guarded by a handful of cadets already known to be trustworthy. In that manner, the scenario concluded without a single casualty, and that student received a high passing grade."

  Kramer looked down the aisle at Chekov again. "Would you care to hypothesize as to that cadet's identity, Cadet Chekov?"

  Chekov shook his head, strangling with shame. It was Cecil who spoke the name, "James Kirk."

  Kramer nodded. "Command is not a picture drawn in black and white," he told them gently. "Not a game that one can win or lose, depending upon one's decisions. Command is an ongoing struggle. In it, you strive to maintain—not win. In the real world, no one is keeping score. I think Mister Chekov can tell you that winning and not losing are not necessarily the same thing."

  No one said anything after that. Chekov folded his hands tight in his lap and watched the stars from his window. All his hopes for a brilliant Starfleet career floundered at his feet like dying birds, killed by the realization that he could never hope to live up to the standard James Kirk had set in both Starfleet and Chekov's own life—the realization that Kirk would be ashamed of Chekov, and everything Chekov had accomplished in the past forty-eight hours.

  When the shuttle bumped gently to ground several hours later, the coral-pink streamers of sunrise were just caressing the eastern horizon. Chekov stayed in his seat, staring out at the pitted, blasted landing pad as the others filed silently past him. He glanced up only once, to watch Sasha walk away from him as though he meant nothing to her and never had. For a moment, he thought he might cry.

  "So, you want to get breakfast?"

  Chekov closed his eyes, not wanting to face anyone—even Cecil—just yet. "I'm not hungry," he said softly.

  Cecil sat down beside him. "I am. Wanna keep me company?"

  "No."

  The last of the footsteps retreated to faint, sharp echoes on the slabwork outside. Chekov felt Cecil shift in the seat, then the computer tech said stiffly, "Boy, are you a poor sport, or what?"

  Chekov laughed without humor. "My career is destroyed in a single weekend, and you expect me to be gracious?"

  "You overreact," Cecil scoffed. "Nobody's gonna boot you out of Starfleet for booby-trapping a scenario."

  "You don't understand…"

  "Sure I do." Cecil caught his shoulder and turned Chekov about to face him. "We all screwed up," he said simply. "I get the impression that's the actual point of these scenarios—we get to do it here so we don't do it in real life. Kramer even said your Captain Kirk is the only one who didn't flunk the damn thing!"

  The very mention of Kirk's name wrung his heart with despair. "I should have known better!" he insisted. "I thought I had the right to serve under him, but I don't know anything!" He took Cecil's shoulders. "I'm sorry, Robert! I know what I was thinking, only…I don't know! Not now. It just doesn't make sense anymore…" He turned away to the window again. "I feel like such a fool…!"

  "They've given fools starship commands before," Cecil tried to console him. "They gave out commands before Kirk came along—they can't break the tradition now!"

  Chekov smiled ruefully and sat back in his seat. "If they ever give me a command, I want you to be my executive officer. To keep me from getting beyond myself like this…to keep me from being stupid."

  Cecil shrugged, flushing with pleasure. "After this weekend," he allowed, "I don't think you'll need as much reminding. So…" He stood and offered Chekov a hand up. "Do you want to discuss my future vacation pay over breakfast?"

  Chekov stood as well, groaning at the very thought of facing the others so soon after his embarrassment. "I can't! If they don't kill me, I'll have to kill myself!"

  Laughing, Cecil headed for the hatch. "Okay," he acquiesced. "We'll get civvy food. More carbohydrates—more energy!" He leapt out onto the landing ground with ridiculous enthusiasm. "We'll need energy!" he assured Chekov fervently. "We're going to be heroes!"

  Chekov stepped down more sedately. Cecil's face held such an expression of trust, Chekov didn't know how to tell him that he feared all that trust misplaced. "Are we? I'd forgotten."

  Cecil slipped an arm around his friend's shoulders and smiled. "I know what you are," he said serenely. "I've always known. And I never forgot…"

  Chapter Five

  HALLEY

  "I CAN'T BELIEVE Starfleet ever let you two out in the field!"

  Chekov rewarded the doctor with a look of profound irritation; Sulu merely started laughing again.

  "It isn't that bad, Bones," Kirk volunteered from his own seat. He hadn't missed the depth of displeasure in his security officer's dark eyes, or the embarrassment still evident on the lieutenant's face. "You do a lot of things in command scenarios that don't exactly correspond to your attitudes in real life."

  McCoy nodded, obviously unconvinced. "Like making up things so you can talk your way out of a bad situation."

  Kirk felt his own cheeks start to burn. "That's different…"

  "Sure it is." The doctor turned to Sulu long enough to order brusquely, "Stop laughing! It's bad for your shoulder!" then commented to Chekov, "If you feel the need to take direct action in the next hour or so, go into the back or something, okay?"

  Chekov continued staring out the window, refusing to produce a reaction. Leaning back with a weary sigh, Kirk hoped the doctor would take the hint and leave Chekov's Academy embarrassments in the past.

  An hour later, emergency sirens boiled away Kirk's troubled dreams like a laser through hot wax. He tried to bolt upright, only to discover he was already sitting, his shoulders braced against the shuttle's inner wall. The muscles in his thigh yanked at his swollen knee; he cursed his disability aloud as he gripped the seat back with one hand.

  "Scotty?" Light from the forward hatch spilled onto the floor of the passenger area. Kirk could just hear Scott's baritone voice above the buzzing siren, answered by Chekov's lighter tenor. "S
cotty! Chekov!" He swore again, knowing they couldn't hear.

  McCoy leapt from his own seat as soon as Kirk swung his legs to the deck. "Hold it, Captain! You're not going anywhere!"

  "Get out of my way, Bones…" Kirk clenched his jaw, settling all his weight onto his left foot as he lurched upright. "I'm going forward."

  McCoy caught at his arm to keep him from falling. "Dammit, Jim!"

  "Scotty!" Kirk pulled his arm from the doctor's grip, immediately sorry for the action when he nearly overbalanced and fell. Two frantic hops—guided more by luck than skill—collided him with the entrance to the forward section. Kirk clutched at the doorway, ignoring McCoy's glare of disapproval as he dragged himself closer to Scott. "What's wrong?"

  The engineer threw a quick glance over his shoulder. "Debris," was all he said as he turned back to where Chekov crouched in the navigator's seat, trying to reach under the shattered panel.

  Even without putting weight on his knee, Kirk could feel the joint filling with hot fluid; the climb in pressure made it feel as though the bone would crack. Hobbling unsteadily past Scott, the captain lowered himself into the pilot's chair so he could extend his damaged leg under the panel.

  "Got it!" Chekov tugged something loose from deep beneath his console, and the alarm abruptly silenced. Scott was already punching up coordinates on the navigations display as Chekov righted himself in the seat.

  "I used the radio to wire up the warning," the engineer explained without looking away from the panel. "I was hoping we wouldn't need it."

  "A warning for what?" Kirk asked again.

  Scott tapped a display to attract Chekov's attention, then stepped back when the lieutenant nodded and set to work. "Space debris," he answered Kirk. "There's flotsam out here big enough to carve a starship out of—even some of the small stuff could hull a craft this size! I rigged the sensors to warn us about anything that got too close." He squinted past the forward viewport, as if he saw something Kirk couldn't. "Something just got close, it's big and we're in its way. If it were smaller we could try to move out of its path, but as it is…" Scotty's voice trailed off.

  Kirk followed the engineer's gaze. "How far?"

  "Ten thousand kilometers," Chekov supplied. "Off our starboard stern." The Russian frowned at the instruments, his eyes flicking back and forth between columns of numbers. "It's closing quickly though—about two hours until impact."

  "And then?"

  McCoy's voice from the doorway startled them all. Kirk glanced at the doctor, then back to where Chekov worried over the panels. "Don't worry about it, Bones," Kirk said softly. "We're going to be fine." Liar! he chastised himself. How can you be such a liar? He opted not to think about it.

  "Sir…?"

  Sulu's voice barely carried from the passenger cabin into the foredeck. McCoy backed out of the doorway to turn toward the helmsman; Kirk called, "What are you thinking of, Mister Sulu?"

  "We could divert it," Sulu answered hoarsely. His eyes were closed, his face drawn and sallow in the half-light. "Isn't the starboard engine nacelle the one that's gone bad?"

  Scott nodded, his eyes unfocused with thought. "That it is…!"

  "Couldn't we use the pile in that nacelle to knock the thing off course?"

  "Aye!" The engineer's face brightened. "Or at least use it to blast the rock into pieces small enough for the shields to handle!"

  Chekov uttered a short, mirthless laugh, then flushed when Scott glowered down at him. "So we sever the pod," Chekov pointed out. "The pod is tumbling at the same velocity as the shuttle…" He covered one column of readings with his hand, as though unable to look at the numbers any longer. "We'd all reach the same point simultaneously."

  "Can't we do something?" McCoy pressed. "Get out and kick it, at least?"

  Chekov looked frustrated to the point of anger, but Scott only laughed. "We can kick it a good sight farther than you might think!"

  "With what?" Chekov wanted to know.

  Scott clapped the younger man on the shoulder. "Accelerators!"

  Revelation hit Kirk at the very same moment. "The e-suits! Go to it, Scotty!"

  Scott ducked past McCoy into the main section, leaving the doctor to ask no one and everyone, "What have the environmental suits got to do with this?"

  "They've got jump packs," Kirk explained, feeling giddy with relief. "Set for continuous burn, we should be able to accelerate the pod to within a half hour of the shuttle."

  "That'll knock us about a bit," Scott called from the other chamber, "but it beats the hell out of a collision!"

  "It ought to make a good light show, too, shouldn't it?" McCoy glanced about hopefully, actually looking optimistic for the first time since the accident. "Even Spock couldn't miss an explosion like that!"

  Kirk nodded; McCoy's faith was infectious. "Let's hope so, Bones." Let's hope Spock's looking in the right direction. There were so very many directions to look in space.

  A loud snapt! pulled Kirk's attention back to the navigation-helm console. Chekov had prized up the panel's face, and now sat with it raised at a seventy-degree angle as he leaned in to inspect the circuits.

  Kirk edged forward as well, reminding himself abruptly of his injured knee and limited mobility. He stopped his movement halfway to the console. "What's wrong?"

  "Hopefully, sir, nothing…" Chekov pulled his head back long enough to call, "Mister Scott, I need to pull the memory!"

  Scott reappeared in the doorway. "What're you doing?" he asked with a frown.

  Chekov nodded toward the open panel. "I've extrapolated the projectile's course against ours. If you want the nacelle to actually hit it, you're going to need something that can remember a course." He motioned toward the circuitry with his free hand.

  Scott grinned and came into the hatch. "Good thinking, lad!"

  McCoy leaned over Scott's shoulder as the engineer bent down and began tugging at a circuit panel. "Won't we miss that?" the doctor inquired.

  Scott shook his head. "With the engines all but out," he finished, "the pilot can't really maneuver, so it's a moot point anyway." He jerked free two interconnected boards, then backed out from under the panel. "That'll do it," he announced. Chekov settled the console back into place.

  McCoy turned to follow Scott's progress back toward the suit locker as the engineer left the forward hatch for the second time. "Let's just hope we don't need those suits later."

  Kirk sighed. "Bones, you're becoming a doomsayer."

  The doctor's half-smile faded. "I worry."

  Kirk's first impulse was to tell McCoy that worrying about not having e-suits would be pointless if Scott's hunk of rock hit them broadside. And even if this diversion worked, they were better off suffocating in a shuttle all together than floating away from each other in fragile, one-man life suits with less than six hours of air. Introducing such thoughts was pointless, however, spirits were low enough without Kirk giving them something else to brood over. "Scotty knows what he's doing. If he can't convince seven jump packs to work together, no one can."

  "Six." When Kirk frowned at Chekov, the lieutenant said simply, "Six." He turned to stare out the front viewport with a distinctly unhappy air. "Someone still has to wear one of them outside to sever the nacelle."

  "It's only logical—I'm the most expendable member of this expedition."

  Kirk felt a mixture of annoyance and admiration at Chekov's persistence. The lieutenant had been in a foul mood since being coerced into explaining the aftermath of his Kobayashi Maru, and Kirk wasn't certain how much to blame that on the impromptu tale-telling or Chekov's usual solemnity. Either way, he didn't like the direction the lieutenant's arguments had taken.

  "Mister Chekov," he said aloud, "I'm sure Mister Scott appreciates your willingness to go EV, but I don't think we've reached the point of discussing who's most expendable just yet."

  Chekov looked up from where he'd been dogging Scott as the engineer wired the accelerators. It struck Kirk, for the first time, that Chekov was the on
ly one who hadn't discarded his duty jacket when Scott reinstated the heating; the brass and silver pips at the shoulder and cuffs glinted dully as he stood. "I'm serious, Captain."

  "You're not going," Scott stated flatly. The Scotsman's obstinacy surprised Kirk even more than Chekov's.

  Chekov glared down at him. "You're our only engineer," he persisted. "If something should happen to you, there isn't anyone else who could repair the systems!"

  Scott wouldn't even look up from his repairs. "Nothing's going to break down any more than it already has."

  "I was brought along to navigate. We have no navigational abilities, we have no helm. If I die, it won't make any difference."

  "Listen to me," Scott overrode him, rocking back on his heels. "There's a laser cutter involved here. There's a lot of connections and conduits that need sealing off if we aren't going to contaminate the whole craft. There's these accelerators to place, and a short-term memory to install. Those are all procedures I'm better qualified to perform."

  "Then show me how," Chekov insisted. "I've worked with you before—you know that I can learn this equipment!"

  "Chekov…!" Scott sat for a moment in silence. Kirk watched his jaw knot as the Scotsman turned a narrow tool over and over in his hand. "That was a long time ago, lad," Scott said slowly, evenly. "I'm concerned about the safety of the people left in the shuttle. I could show you the equipment, I could drill you on the procedures, but I'm the only one who could make absolutely certain everything was done right! If you missed even one conduit, or slipped and damaged the pile—"

  "I'll be careful."

  "You won't be anything!" Scott exploded, angry and insistent. "Because you're not going out there!"

  "Why won't you even talk to me about it?" Chekov wanted to know.

  "Because you're not qualified!" the engineer shot back. Chekov drew back as if struck, his eyes wide and injured. "You haven't logged a single hour with delicate equipment in nigh on five years!" Scott continued. "I'll be damned if I depend on you remembering enough of what I once showed you to do this!"